Friday Night Lights characters move on, but not far

Friday Night Lights returns tonight with old characters in new hats. Many familiar residents of Dillon, Texas, have moved on to new jobs, new schools and new challenges. Coach Eric Taylor (Kyle Chandler) is among them. He pulls a red cap onto his head.

He now wears the colors of East Dillon, though the hat reads only “East,” suggesting a sort of regression. There’s no romantic westward expansion in Taylor’s immediate future.

It’s no coincidence that the show, which begins airing on DirecTV’s The 101 Network this fall before returning to NBC in 2010, pits East Dillon’s red against Taylor’s old Dillon blue. Throw in the obligatory uniform white and you have colors that suggest an American unity. Leave out the white and you have a primary color battle. From the first snap, this little big show has used football as a metaphor for our times, our congregations and our conflicts.

Before the crash, the show’s writers in previous seasons infused their storylines with a desperation and anxiety that seemed prophetic. This season they seem to be on the zeitgeist, casting Taylor and his town in a fairly clear allegory. The sunlit sense of promise that closed the show’s third season is replaced by dark interiors, storm clouds and shadows. Taylor is a leader who has walked into an impossible mess. The show, which has always found a way to balance sentimentality with an honest coldness, begins its fourth season looking at the underside of hope.

Because NBC and DirecTV are sharing the burden of the show’s cost, it has shown a more assured sense of direction. It still boasts a young and attractive cast, but an ill-fated foray into teen drama (season two) — which earned it neither a ratings bump nor critical affection — is long past. The characters are now left to run their course of questionable decisions and their outcomes.

To offer where-are-they-now accounts for each Dillon resident is to rob the season premiere of some detailed poignancy. But it’s not a spoiler to say those who graduated last season haven’t drifted too far. There have been no pulls in the show’s delicate fabric.

Which isn’t to suggest FNL has settled into stasis. There’s a swelling sense of anxiety and outrage. The tension that will drive this season derives from the redistricting hinted at during last season’s finale. Taylor finds himself in a divided high school within a divided town. Issues of class and race, merely dappled through storylines in previous seasons, look to be presented with larger brush strokes this year.

Dillon’s a big broken mess. There are no easy solutions.

“All I want to do is come home,” one character says, seeking solace. But it’s not that simple anymore. Characters have moved east and west, and there’s no longer security in having a sense of place.

Even the football field loses its status as sanctuary. “There’s a joy to this game, is there not?” Taylor asks. His faith will be shaken.

The show is too sentimental to be void of hope. But it’s too honest to sell false hope because it knows where we’ve been and where we are. And it’s not sure where we’re headed.